


Waiting

by luoup (ravenic)



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5418416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/luoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emil wakes up early to wait for Lalli.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting

The sun isn’t up yet. It’s still dark outside, but sunrise is coming, and the sky is just beginning to turn from blue-black to peach. There are no lights on in the Cat-tank, but the faint traces of dawn from outside illuminate the interior of the Cat-tank just enough that a person might be able to walk from one end to the other and not trip over anything in the darkness.

It is very quiet. The rest of the crew is fast asleep; the only sound in the entire tank a faint snoring coming from somewhere in Sigrun’s bunk. Tuuri can’t even be seen, just a lump buried under the blankets. Mikkel lies flat on his back, unmoving, and if not for the slow, soft rise and fall of his chest he could almost be thought to be dead. Reynir is well on his way to falling out of his bed, slid halfway out and with the blankets twisted every which way, his hair winding like a river across the pillow before disappearing beneath it.

One bed lies empty. Emil is not asleep. He sits in the front passenger seat, arms wrapped loosely around his knees, and watches the silent world outside, waiting for the last member of their team to return.

He started doing this recently – waiting for Lalli. Waking up in the dark, moving quietly to sit in the front of the Cat-tank and watch the sun rise and wait. He makes excuses to himself, telling himself that he was keeping watch for monsters, that he was guarding the team, that he just wanted to see the sunrise, but they’re all just that. Excuses. He knows that really he’s just waiting until they’re all back together again. He has a mug of hot tea waiting, and some of Mikkel’s cookies that he stole after the other man fell asleep last night. He’ll get Lalli fed and cleaned up and put him to bed before the day really gets started, and hope that their scout gets enough sleep to be functional later.

They should have brought two scouts. Emil hardly knows Lalli, but he sure as hell knows that if he was running around all day _and_ all night, trying to find a safe path for the Cat-tank to follow, the entire crew’s lives in his hands, he would drop dead of exhaustion. Plus Lalli is also acting as team cat – Emil remembers all too clearly the old library-turned-hospital, and Lalli’s reaction to the trolls hiding inside it, far before any of the ordinary humans’.

It has to be exhausting. Emil doesn’t know how Lalli can do it. Sometimes he wonders how long Lalli can keep doing it.

Emil is not a scout. He’s not built to run through an entire town and find a safe path for the Cat-tank to travel. He doesn’t have the stamina to run for that long. He doesn’t have the memory to keep all the routes clear in his head and choose the best one to take for the next day. He doesn’t have the foresight, or the skill set, or the training. He can’t do Lalli’s job.

He can’t do Lalli’s job, but he can try to help however he can. He can’t stay out all night running through the city, but he can sit here and wait, with Mikkel’s cookies and tea, and watch for Lalli to return. He can give him his coat to curl up and sleep under, he can soothe him when the dreams make him restless, he can fuss at his hair because they have no other way of communicating than with hair pets and hand grabs and cookie exchanges.

They’ve never spoken. Well, more accurately, they’ve never spoken words that the other has understood. Emil has spoken a lot. He talks to Lalli almost constantly, as if he’s trying to fill the void of Lalli’s near-unbroken silence. Sometimes he forgets that Lalli can talk. Then the Finn will say something – a word, a few sentences directed at Tuuri, before falling back into his habitual quiet, and Emil is reminded of the sound of the scout’s voice. He can’t understand a word Lalli says, but he likes hearing him. He’s terrible with languages, but maybe someday he’ll learn some Finnish. Maybe even on this mission.

Emil has never spoken another language. He has never been out of Sweden, right up until the moment he got into a rusty tank with headlights shaped like cat ears and rode with four complete strangers into the Silent World. He can’t talk with Lalli, but somehow he’s grown fond of the skinny Finn. Fond enough to use his own body to shield him when a troll broke through the train’s roof. Fond enough to look for him in a building filled with monsters. Fond enough to get up early, in the darkness, and wait for him to return to the Cat-tank, to clean him and feed him and get him to sleep for the short amount of time he will have before he has to start doing day scout work.

Emil’s thought are broken by a faint something of movement in the corner of his eye. For a moment, all his senses go on high alert – is it a troll? Are they in danger? Where’s his rifle?

Then he sees the white coat, almost invisible in the snow and first rays of sun light of the day, the long black boots, the silvery-gray-white hair beneath the floppy hood, and he relaxes again.

The sun is rising. Lalli is back.


End file.
